What a difference 6 weeks makes...

People often comment to me that I always seem to be doing something;  that I appear to never 'sit still' for very long. In this post you will get some idea of why I try to live life to the fullest extent. I am going to show you 2 photos . These photos were taken in 2002 and were taken approximately 6 weeks apart.
Here I am in April...

With the cheeky grin I inherited from my father! 

Just before the long weekend in early May, I started to feel unwell...quite vague symptoms... I cancelled a day trip to Toowoomba with friends on the Monday which was the Labor Day holiday. On Tuesday, I awoke still feeling unwell but went into work as a medical certificate was required to take a day off after a public holiday...I got sent home within an hour because the other staff, said that 'I didn't look very well' and I didn't disagree. I stayed home from work on Wednesday but when I still didn't feel well on the Thursday I made an appointment with the GP.
The doctor didn't think I looked very well either and took my temperature...it was 39.9 Celcius. Within the hour I was at the hospital casualty section. The staff took one look at me and ordered a gurney. The rest of that day (as well as the next few days) is a blur...canulas, drips, doctors, tests, scans, ultra sounds, x-rays, nurses checking vital signs, ECGs, EEGs etc etc....Over the next few days I was tested for so many diseases and all were negative results. I would have raging fevers especially early in the morning, although for most of the time I wasn't aware of time.

Doctors came up with hypotheses but no tests confirmed any...and the fevers continued and my liver started to fail... Two of my workmates came to visit me on my second day in hospital and apparently went back to school and told the principal that they thought that I was dying, because I was grey in the face...

My brother was my next of kin as I had only know the man who would become DH, for a few months by then. The doctors told my brother that I was not expected to live, which distressed him no end as he had taken 44 years to find me after he had been adopted at birth. He would go to work each day but sit with me all night...even though I wasn't fully aware that he was there.

Then after 9 days like that, one morning I woke up with a clear head...but still with a raging temperature. Eventually on the 11th day they let me go home even though the temp wasn't normal...I was weak but pining for home. This next photo is the one DH took of me on that first day home from hospital...My wonderful female GP took over my care then, with her ringing me several times a week to check up on me, plus one, sometimes 2 visits to her surgery each week. I was a total of 7 weeks off work. By then, my liver function was back to near normal, but I took many more months to feel really well again...and to this day, it is a mystery to what illness struck me down so suddenly...the specialist at the hospital decided to call it 'an unknown virus'...

So after being so sick I decided that life must be lived to the fullest...and that's what I try to do. DH can't understand why I keep the second photo...but it's a good reminder that your life can change in a matter of weeks.